Bears are reclaiming their historic Nevada territory new research shows

Black bears Tahoe are more likely to be killed by drivers because they tend to roam in search of food. Wildlife officials say this year could be a good year for bears because of all foliage that grew from the recent historically wet winter.
Marcella Corona/RGJ

Nevada Department of Wildlife officials release a bear and her three cubs near Ash Canyon on Friday, Nov. 14, 2014. The bears were found raiding garbage cans and searching for fallen fruit from trees.(Photo: Provided by John Axtell/NDOW)

That’s according to research that shows black bears are spreading hundreds of miles beyond the Sierra Nevada and into Great Basin ranges they abandoned long ago.

“We are starting to see bears show up out by Tonopah, out by Austin,” said Jon Beckmann, a biologist for the Wildlife Conservation Society.

It’s a far cry from less than 40 years ago when bears were thought to have been banished from the entire state.

In 1979 state officials attended a Western Black Bear workshop and said Nevada no longer had bears, Beckmann said.

Now the state is home to an estimated 500 to 600 bears, Beckmann said. About 50 to 60 percent of those bears are thought to be living in the Tahoe Basin or the Carson and Pine Nut ranges near Reno and Carson City, he said.

But in recent years they’ve been found to be reclaiming more territory throughout the state, he said.

Beckmann said bears are returning to the Wassuk Range, Mt. Grant and the Sweetwater Range.

“The bears have kind of been recolonizing over the last 15 or 20 years,” he said.

The spread of bears throughout the state was the subject of a recently published paper in the journal Diversity and Distributions.

The research looked not only at the spread of bears but at their genetic diversity, a factor that’s important to successful recolonization.

The genetic research showed bears are expanding west to east from a refugia population in the Sierra Nevada.

During the early 1900s unregulated hunting, deforestation and conflicts with settlers seeking to protect livestock contributed to the extirpation of bears from the Great Basin, Beckmann said.

In more recent years forest recovery, public education and improved grazing practices have contributed to circumstances that are favorable for supporting bears.

“This study represents a great partnership between wildlife management and geneticists,” said Jason Malaney, lead author of the study. “Wildlife managers deploy long-term field surveys of black bears, collect tissue samples along the way that are then used to better understand the complexities of recolonization.”

Beckmann said the return of bears to the Great Basin is a rare opportunity.

“Globally, we don’t really have a lot of opportunity to see recovery of large carnivores,” he said.

The bears’ return gives researchers a chance to ask further questions, such as what it might mean for other large animals like mule deer and mountain lions.

Beckmann said those species have gained prominence in the Great Basin since the extirpation of bears. When bears still dominated the region mountain lions were rarer and pronghorn were the dominant wild ungulate, he said.

Although bears are expected to make their mark, Beckmann said there’s no reason to worry about livestock.

Although classified as carnivores, he said bears aren’t primarily interested in killing domestic animals.

They tend to eat grasses and insects in the spring and berries and pine nuts in summer and fall, he said.

“They are technically carnivores and they will eat meat,” Beckmann said. “But the majority of their diet is vegetation.”